1. Technical Field
The present invention relates, in particular, to a content providing system and method, a content providing apparatus and method, a content receiver and method, a recording medium, and a program that make it possible to provide viewers with contents at low cost.
2. Background Art
In a BS (Broadcast Satellite) television broadcast and a CS (Communication Satellite) television broadcast, television signals are digitized and broadcasted. This makes it possible not only to secure a larger number of broadcast channels but also to increase a transmission amount of data on the respective broadcast channels compared with that in an analog system.
Thus, for example, it is also proposed to send an advertisement to viewers with a television broadcast via a satellite and receive responses to the advertisement via a network (e.g., JP-A-2001-325519).
However, the proposal in JP-A-2001-325519 does not sufficiently make use of functions of a digital broadcast.
Thus, it is also proposed that each broadcasting station not only broadcasts one program content on one broadcast channel but also broadcasts transaction contents for selling commodities introduced in the program to viewers as a type of a data broadcast.
However, to prepare the transaction contents independently, each broadcasting station has to produce the transaction contents using a BML (Broadcast Markup Language). This takes a lot of time and labor and increases cost. Thus, under the actual circumstances, a data broadcast of each broadcast channel is not sufficiently utilized.